this process special advantages which are not always considered. If a farm, consisting of barren hills, and valleys liable tosudden floods, could be subjected to a rational system for taking water from the portions which had too much, and giving it to the parts which had too little, not only would the meadows resume their ancient fertility, but, as he says, their productiveness would appear unimportant as compared with that of the high lands under the system. It is a familiar fact that, for most crops, a soil, moist, but well-drained, the pores of which are supplied with damp air, but not clogged with water, is the most favorable; and, with proper cultivation, a soil naturally dry, but judiciously irrigated, is capable of producing almost any result known to agriculture. It is curious, to us, to find such earnest advocacy of artificial irrigation in France, which we generally suppose to be a country of almost unlimited fertility; but if it will pay to irrigate the French farms, by comparatively small isolated systems, it must be still more profitable in this country, where the vastness of scale on which irrigation can be applied greatly reduces the cost. M. Cotard thinks that the Government should help in the work, and it is impossible, in reflecting on the enormous importance of agricultural products to any country, not to agree with him. Veryfew people realize that, although less than one-sixth of the area of the United States, exclusive of the Indian Territory and Alaska, is under any sort of cultivation, and the cultivation of much of that is of the most scanty kind, the value of our agricultural products last year was about two thousand million dollars. This year, owing to more abundant rains in the dryer parts of the West, it is estimated that our farms will earn for us at least seven hundred millions more than last year; so that, even with slight cultivation, one-sixth of our territory will bring us more value this year in farm crops alone than has been produced by all our gold and silver mines put together in the last forty years. Our great Dakota and Nebraska wheat farms produce at present only about one-fourth as many bushels of wheat to the acre as a French or Belgian farm, or one of the old-fashioned kind in the Mohawk Valley, while millions of acres in Colorado, Texas and western Kansas only need irrigation to exhibit astonishing fertility. If a few showers on the edge of the arid region can add in a single year seven hundred millions to the value of our agricultural products, one can hardly guess what might be done by systematic provision for a much larger territory. If the cultivated area could be doubled, which would be an easy matter, since even on the present farms only half the land is, on an average, under any kind of cultivation, the increase in the value of products would amount, if farming methods were not improved, to about forty dollars a year for each inhabitant. If, with this, agricultural methods could be improved so as to make the Western farms produce half as much per acre as the best Eastern ones, which does not seem an extravagant hope, the annual value of our wheat, corn, beef, butter, cheese, vegetables and other farm products would be more than ten thousand millions of dollars. This is more than the value of all the gold and silver that have been found in the United States since the time of Columbus, and the proceeds, if distributed equally among the present population, would give to each man, woman and child about a hundred and sixty dollars a year, or about eight hundred dollars a year to each household. No doubt, there would be difficulties to overcome before this prospect could be realized, but there is no question that the land is there, and that no extraordinary productiveness would be required to enable it to fulfil such expectations; and if there is any public money to spare for works of general utility, it could hardly be spent for a better purpose than in these great works for the promotion of agriculture which cannot be carried out by private enterprise. M. Cotard reminds his French readers that “from the soil are drawn the surest elements of security and prosperity”; and, for Americans, perhaps Mr. Ruskin’s aphorism is suitable — that “Food can only be got out of the ground, and happiness only out of honesty. ”
PR
OBABLY most of our readers remember the terrific picture of a Patagonian native which used to illustrate South American ethnology in the geography-books of their school-days, and they will hardly be prepared to hear that both Patagonia and Terra del Fuego are now prosperous regions, in a condition of civilization not very different from that of Dakota or Labrador. Patagonia belongs to Chili, which appropriated it some years ago, and is coming into note
as a grazing country. Until recently, the Chilian Government made grants of land to settlers, but no more public land is now given away, and settlers are obliged to lease such tracts as they wish for, at the moderate rental of four-fifths of a cent an acre per annum. A twenty-year lease is given, and as the profits of stock-raising are very large, the tenant can generally secure a fortune before his lease expires. The method of doing this is to select a tract of perhaps fifty thousand acres, the rent of which will be four hundred dollars a year. Four thousand ewes, with young, are then purchased, at an average of three dollars apiece, and turned out upon the land. At the end of a year, there will be eight thousand sheep, besides a crop of eight thousand fleeces of wool. The wool, owing to the coldness of the climate, is long, and of good quality, and the fleeces are heavy, weighing six to eight pounds each, and worth, on an average, eighteen cents a pound in England. The next year, the ratio of increase will not be so large, but an average of sixty per cent annual profit can be counted upon.
B
ESIDES sheep, horned cattle are raised, but at less profit, since there is no market for the beef, and the hides are
the only salable part. The climate, however, is so well suited to the business that it is proposed to establish a canning factory in Terra del Fuego, and utilize the meat, as well as the hides of the animals. For those who prefer aquatic exercises, the seal-fishery offers handsome rewards. Once a year, in June, the female seals land upon the coast with their young ones of the year before, and leave them there, to shift for themselves. The fur of the young seals is more valuable than that of the old ones, and at these seasons the hunters hide themselves near the water’s edge, and, when a sufficient number of seals has landed, rush out, and kill them in great numbers, a single boat’s crew sometimes returning with four thousand skins, which are worth six or eight dollars apiece. The skins are not cured, but are simply salted, and sent to London, where they are manufactured into the commercial seal fur.
O
NE of the advantages of the English plan of railway cars is illustrated by a case which was brought into court a few days ago. Every one knows that the English railway companies, as well as those on the Continent, have of late years, finding that their passengers objected to being robbed, assaulted and burned to death, without any means of communicating their condition to the train officials, connected their cars by a bell-cord, which passes through them like the bell-cord in an American train. The sense of safety conveyed by this contrivance is, however, somewhat modified by placards, posted in each compartment near the rope, and threatening terrific penalties upon any one who touches it “ without necessity, ” a matter of which, naturally, the railroad company would be the judge; and, in England, it appears that the cord is generally broken, or out of order, somewhere in its course, so that pulling it has no effect upon anything. A compartment in a train
in this condition, occupied by peaceful passengers, was entered at a certain station by a man with a huge bull-dog. The occupants of the compartment were somewhat alarmed at seeing a four-legged passenger of this sort ushered in among them, and their nervousness was not diminished when the bull-dog’s master proceeded to unchain the beast, announcing that he should “fix” any one who dared to object to his proceedings. After a time, the society of the two brutes became insupportable, and one of the peaceful passengers mustered up courage to try to call the attention of a “guard” by pulling the bellrope, The bell did not respond to the pull of the rope, and the “guard ” remained, in consequence, oblivious of the appeals of his charge. Not so, however, the owner of the bull-dog, who, noticing the movement, at once carried out his promise to “fix” persons dissatisfied with his conduct by falling upon the puller of the rope and pounding him. In an American car, even if the dog were endured, any such demonstration on the part of his master would be immediately followed by his elimination, dog and all, through the most convenient window or door; but the small number of decent passengers in the compartment did not feel equal to engaging the man and the dog together, so they suffered in silence until the train arrived at a station, and the door was unlocked. Then the tables were turned. A policeman was immediately found, and the dog owner was hauled before a magistrate. Complaint and trial followed in due course, and British justice “fixed” the haughty enemy of critics, who was a man of independent fortune, by sentencing him to a month’s imprisonment, with hard labor.
PR
OBABLY most of our readers remember the terrific picture of a Patagonian native which used to illustrate South American ethnology in the geography-books of their school-days, and they will hardly be prepared to hear that both Patagonia and Terra del Fuego are now prosperous regions, in a condition of civilization not very different from that of Dakota or Labrador. Patagonia belongs to Chili, which appropriated it some years ago, and is coming into note
as a grazing country. Until recently, the Chilian Government made grants of land to settlers, but no more public land is now given away, and settlers are obliged to lease such tracts as they wish for, at the moderate rental of four-fifths of a cent an acre per annum. A twenty-year lease is given, and as the profits of stock-raising are very large, the tenant can generally secure a fortune before his lease expires. The method of doing this is to select a tract of perhaps fifty thousand acres, the rent of which will be four hundred dollars a year. Four thousand ewes, with young, are then purchased, at an average of three dollars apiece, and turned out upon the land. At the end of a year, there will be eight thousand sheep, besides a crop of eight thousand fleeces of wool. The wool, owing to the coldness of the climate, is long, and of good quality, and the fleeces are heavy, weighing six to eight pounds each, and worth, on an average, eighteen cents a pound in England. The next year, the ratio of increase will not be so large, but an average of sixty per cent annual profit can be counted upon.
B
ESIDES sheep, horned cattle are raised, but at less profit, since there is no market for the beef, and the hides are
the only salable part. The climate, however, is so well suited to the business that it is proposed to establish a canning factory in Terra del Fuego, and utilize the meat, as well as the hides of the animals. For those who prefer aquatic exercises, the seal-fishery offers handsome rewards. Once a year, in June, the female seals land upon the coast with their young ones of the year before, and leave them there, to shift for themselves. The fur of the young seals is more valuable than that of the old ones, and at these seasons the hunters hide themselves near the water’s edge, and, when a sufficient number of seals has landed, rush out, and kill them in great numbers, a single boat’s crew sometimes returning with four thousand skins, which are worth six or eight dollars apiece. The skins are not cured, but are simply salted, and sent to London, where they are manufactured into the commercial seal fur.
O
NE of the advantages of the English plan of railway cars is illustrated by a case which was brought into court a few days ago. Every one knows that the English railway companies, as well as those on the Continent, have of late years, finding that their passengers objected to being robbed, assaulted and burned to death, without any means of communicating their condition to the train officials, connected their cars by a bell-cord, which passes through them like the bell-cord in an American train. The sense of safety conveyed by this contrivance is, however, somewhat modified by placards, posted in each compartment near the rope, and threatening terrific penalties upon any one who touches it “ without necessity, ” a matter of which, naturally, the railroad company would be the judge; and, in England, it appears that the cord is generally broken, or out of order, somewhere in its course, so that pulling it has no effect upon anything. A compartment in a train
in this condition, occupied by peaceful passengers, was entered at a certain station by a man with a huge bull-dog. The occupants of the compartment were somewhat alarmed at seeing a four-legged passenger of this sort ushered in among them, and their nervousness was not diminished when the bull-dog’s master proceeded to unchain the beast, announcing that he should “fix” any one who dared to object to his proceedings. After a time, the society of the two brutes became insupportable, and one of the peaceful passengers mustered up courage to try to call the attention of a “guard” by pulling the bellrope, The bell did not respond to the pull of the rope, and the “guard ” remained, in consequence, oblivious of the appeals of his charge. Not so, however, the owner of the bull-dog, who, noticing the movement, at once carried out his promise to “fix” persons dissatisfied with his conduct by falling upon the puller of the rope and pounding him. In an American car, even if the dog were endured, any such demonstration on the part of his master would be immediately followed by his elimination, dog and all, through the most convenient window or door; but the small number of decent passengers in the compartment did not feel equal to engaging the man and the dog together, so they suffered in silence until the train arrived at a station, and the door was unlocked. Then the tables were turned. A policeman was immediately found, and the dog owner was hauled before a magistrate. Complaint and trial followed in due course, and British justice “fixed” the haughty enemy of critics, who was a man of independent fortune, by sentencing him to a month’s imprisonment, with hard labor.